side issue, she would be driven back by the sheer pain of the effort of contraction, and would impatiently bring the sitting to an end and seek solitude. It was as if she were confronted by some deeper convinced self who did, unknown to her, take sides on things, both sides, with equal emphasis, impartially, but with a passion that left her in an enhancement of longing to discover the secret of its nature. For the rest of the evening this strange self seemed to hover about her, holding her in a serenity undisturbed by reflection.
Sometimes the memory of her work would leap out when a conversation was flagging, and lift her as she sat inert, to a distance whence the dulled expiring thread showed suddenly glowing, looping forward into an endless bright pattern interminably animated by the changing lights of fresh inflowing thoughts. During the engrossing incidents of her day’s work she forgot them completely, but in every interval they were there; or not there; she had dreamed them. …
With each fresh attack on the text, the sense of guilt grew stronger; falling upon her the moment, having read the page of German, she set to work to apply the discoveries she had made. It was as if these discoveries were the winning, through some inborn trick of intelligence not her own by right of any process of application or of discipline, of an unfair advantage. She sought within her for a memory that might explain the acquisition of the right of escape into this life within, outside, securely away from, the life of everyday. The school memories that revived in her dealings with her sentences were the best, the most secret and the happiest, the strands where the struggle to acquire had been all a painless interested adventuring. The use of this strange faculty, so swift in discovery, so relentless in criticism, giving birth, as one by one the motley of truths urging its blind movements, came recognizably into view, to such a fascinating game of acceptance and fresh trial, produced in the long run when the full balance was struck, an overweight of joy bought without price.